The present invention was devised for the purpose of replacing grips on golf clubs, although its applicability extends to any comparable situation.
Replacement grips for gold clubs commonly are of rubber and are molded to be slightly smaller in inside diameter than the golf club shaft to which they are to be applied. To complicate the matter further, gold club shafts are commonly tapered with a larger diameter at the free end of the shaft so that the smallest diameter of the grip must be initially drawn over the largest diameter portion of the shaft.
To resleeve a golf club shaft, the practice is to wind the shaft with a double coated adhesive paper, wet the adhesive on the exterior of the paper with an organic solvent to make it slippery, laboriously work the small end of the grip over the large end of the shaft, and, by pushing down on the sleeve, twisting, and working the sleeve with a slipping manual action, eventually emplace the sleeve at the desired position on the shaft. Obviously, if the lower end of the sleeve could be grasped and spread to encompass the large end of the shaft, and drawing or tractive effort applied along with pushing or propulsive effort to slide the sleeve into its proper position, the procedure would be greatly facilitated.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,233,313 to Roth dated Feb. 8, 1966 illustrates a device directed to somewhat the same purpose as the present invention. Roth shows a tonglike structure with a riveted or bolted pivot point and semicircular jaws with upstanding flanges adapted to fit into a sleeve when together and to spread the sleeve by a scissors action to fit the sleeve over a shaft, the spread gap of the jaws being sufficient to encompass the shaft.
The difficulty with the Roth device in comparison with the tool of the present invention is that it is considerably more expensive, and it is poorly adapted to the application of tractive effort. The effort is offset to the side of the shaft rather than concentrically therewith which, obviously, is the most efficient axis of effort application.
A somewhat similar device is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 544,268 to Unsinger et al. dated Aug. 6, 1895.